Geronimo (Goyaalé,"one who yawns", born Gila River Arizona, 16 June 1829, died Fort Sill, Oklahoma, 17 February 1909): "This portrait of the historical old Apache was made in March, 1905. According to Geronimo's calculation he was at the time seventy-six years of age, thus making the year of his birth 1829. The picture was taken at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, the day before the inauguration of President Roosevelt, Geronimobeing one of the warriors who took part in the inaugural parade at Washington. He appreciated the honor of being one of those chosen for this occasion, and the catching of his features while the old warrior was in a retrospective mood was most fortunate": description and photo by Edward S. Curtis (1868-1952), from Curtis: The Apache, the Jicarillas, the Navaho, 1907 (Northwestern University Library/Library of Congress)

Geronimo, head chief of the Chiricahua Apaches, identified in 1887 newspaper photo caption as "now on the war path in Sierra Madres": here seen in studio portrait, holding a rifle and wearing boot moccasins, a breechcloth, and scarves around his neck. (From photographer's notes: "Genuine age 50 to 55. Rather polite fellow, thought cunning, far seeing. Perfect photo for newspaper in every respect. Three squaws -- most cow cunning on reservation, small squint eyes = looked sideways, spoke Spanish):photo by A.T. Willcox, July 1885 (U.S. Department of Defense/Department of the Army/Office of the Chief Signal Office/National Archive)

Chiricahua Apache chief Geronimo (right) and a small group of his warriors: photographer unknown, 1886 (Arizona Historical Society)

Scene in Geronimo's camp, before surrender to General Crook, 27 March 1886: Geronimo and Natches mounted, Geronimo's son, Perico, standing at his side holding baby: photo by A.S. Fly, 1886 (Library of Congress)

17 comments:

Dear Tom:Great photos, as usual. My favorite is Geronimo in the pumpkin patch, which we used a number times in our publications when I was with the National Museum of the American Indian. I don't know how to include it here, so I'll email to you.

After two weeks of trying to finish the condensation that is "The Killing of Crazy Horse" who should flash before my eyes but Hollow Horn Bear and American Horse. Yikes! But please, bring more TC and we’ll see who we were and who we might be.

Great photo of "He-who-yawns" as stout family man with his brood in the pumpkin patch. Many thanks.

I'd put up a a link to it, but the last x number of times I tried linking to my incoming mail, I ended up staring the blank end of Technology in the face.

(The Predictive Mind has always eluded me also, but alas in my case that's not from a position of Beauty and Power...)

Doowman,

Who we were sometimes scares me and who we might be next leaves me quaking in my bandages, but I think you're right, those are the best reasons to keep on digging and learning, while we yet can.

Elmo,

Well, my take on what Ed was trying to picture there -- something about the Beauty of the Soul shining out from the physical form -- is something no amount of gym time will ever provide.

To me all the present-day white-world buffed-up fitness-machine gods and goddesses and all the SI swimsuit Belles of the Brainless Ball pretty much add up to just so much recycled eyeball-trash.

(But of curse those are just my own ancient tarnished and cracked eyeballs talking.)

Ed,

You got that right, as usual.

Those attitudes of the past still hang in the air as lame ironic jokes, eg. the "comic" Indian-hung-while-praying scene in the ever-clever, ever-empty Coen Bros. new trash remake of the old True Grit trash.

(I suppose I am guilty of habitually favouring the trash of yesteryear to the trash of the present -- but again, that's spoken from a belly-on-the-ground position, the one adopted after the cowering-on-one's-knees position simply hurts too much to sustain.)

PS. Why does all this remind me that John Wayne's autopsy revealed something like seventy pounds of animal matter lodged in his intestines?

they're bearing right down Pennsylvania Avenue ... on the way the The White House

the left takes you down Constitution Avenuean to the Mall

anyway regarding John Wayne's intestines(and you can google this) the average American male is carrying in his intestinesabout 20 pounds of shit! some of it in there

depending on his age for FORTY YEARS!we's a culture of Gluttony, Greed, and Ignorance......all in the name of Politically Correct Religion-Nationalismso

bottom line.. Garbage In Garbage Out

wellnow off to fry up some dead pig-fat (bacon) and a couple of chicken fetuses some drop-dead lard biscuits fried-up frozen white taters-totterswash it down with 14 cups of coffee with 12 teaspoonsful of white sugar and sit back with a 1/2 pack of Lucky Strikesand watch the FOOTBAL..

I think that The Patriots are gonna kick-the-shit out of The Redskins ...again.

Several of the images of the exiled Geronimo in his later role as cultural property, a hood ornament on Teddy Roosevelt's inaugural parade and so on, cause one to wince. But only for an instant. Then we see the resistant spirit of the old warrior emerge, transforming the power dynamics. His dignity, even in humiliation, takes command.

One passage from Edward Dorn's Recollections of Gran Apacheria that had been part of the post, situated beneath the photo of that parade -- and then was removed for the sake of symmetry (predictively!) -- is germane, as we are reminded by Jennifer Dunbar Dorn, who knows more than anybody about this great poem and its author.

"When Geronimo was in Washington for the Inauguration of Roosevelt he was interviewed at the Indian Hotel by S.M. Huddleston of the Dept. of Agriculture. Geronimo signaled through Geo. Wratten that he wanted to know where Huddleston lived, and was surprised and disappointed to learn that Huddleston lived in only *one* house on only *one* street. Ugh! he said in gruff disgust and signaled that if *He* were to live in the city, *He* would live in every house in it!"

For those who may not have previously encountered it, Gran Apacheria is a salient document of a period when American poetry briefly became an agency of intelligent vision. Central to the visionary contribution of Edward Dorn was his understanding of the importance of a spirit of resistance in keeping up the vital signs.

The longest continuous runof external resistance:the Apache Wars.

Without significant intermissionfrom the Seventeenth Century onward

The against-the-grain or resistant tendencies in Dorn's work have, unhappily, been intermitted, in American poetry, or what remains of it, in later epochs.

I liked this a great deal -- the poem and the pictures -- and think I basically get it and the oppositions the poem sets, up, but if you could possibly provide some guidance regarding the phrase Predictive Mind, that would be helpful and appreciated. I've gone in a couple of directions on this; one of them was pretty funny, actually.

Dunno about the Indian Hotel. Maybe Somebody Out There, or Up There, does, though?

Curtis,

In Gran Apacheria, Dorn defines the White World, or European/American, "Predictive Mind", as "the highest mutation of force" -- a determinate, abstracting way of conceiving and describing and arguing, instrumental to cultural/political dominance; he contrasts this to the "Thinking Earth" of the Apache, whose "leading ideas/come directly from the landform".

Dorn thought any understanding of any people or any culture, its way of being and thinking, its way of life, in short, began with the attempt to understand its ongoing living relation to the place from which it derives.

"When Geronimo was in Washington for the Inauguration of Roosevelt he was interviewed at the Indian Hotel by S.M. Huddleson of the Dept. of Agriculture. Geronimo signaled through Geo. Wratten that he wanted to know where Huddleson lived, and was surprised and disappointed to learn that Huddleson lived in only *one* house on only *one* street. Ugh! he said in gruff disgust and signaled that if *He* were to live in the city, *He* would live in every house in it!"

Hi again and thank you. That makes sense and is a lot clearer and more concise than some of the things I read. I also read about the Huddleson interview this morning and related the anecdote you included to Caroline over lunch today. It's a great story.